


Portal: There is No Magic

by iammemyself



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:46:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An introspective featuring Douglas Rattmann that takes place between GLaDOS's takeover and his actions against her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portal: There is No Magic

There is No Magic

Indiana

Please, God, help me to bend time and space.   
Show me how to twist reality until it is unrecognisable, teach me to breathe air where there is none, reveal to me the inner workings of the universe so that I can submit it to my will.  
Taking back the future is not as simple as predicting the past. We once spoke to ears that never heard us, and now we are paying the price.  
We were wrong.  
If no miracle occurs, if we can’t repair the damage we have done, I must shoulder the blame. I didn’t try hard enough. I am sorry.  
Please have mercy on us, lift us out of this self-inflicted Armageddon and beckon us back to the safety of the forsaken trees. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, and sometimes it is just plain ignorance. No. I’ll admit it. It was arrogance. We did not understand that which we could never understand, and that was what we did not understand. Forgive us. We gave up our birthright; perhaps not quite willingly, but we left caution at the door a long time ago. If this is the end of the world, the fire and brimstone that you have promised, so be it. But please grant me this one last prayer: give me the means to save the world.  
In the end, she is right: numbers do not fail, statistics do not lie, and when reality no longer exists you have only yourself to blame. And if there truly are no miracles, no knight-errant to come sweeping in to slay the dragon, then I will know hope has died. When that happens, the world will cease to turn, and it will fall out of the sky in a thousand tiny pieces that the sun will regard with indifference. As the centre of this galaxy does right now. And when equations fail, when gravity no longer applies and every law you know has been shattered and tossed at your feet, what is there left to believe in? And yet I know better than to believe in something I cannot truly see.   
There is only one thing left.  
I must take up my shield, I must put my faith in impossibilities, and in truth, I don’t know if I can. I have had to see through the illusions for so long that I don’t know if I can give them substance once more. I’ve never been one to reach for something that’s not there. But if I don’t take the chance, if I don’t dip my fingers into the fabric of reality and thread together these loose strands, I will have again stood by and done nothing. And by God’s hand or by my own, I have been given that which I have asked for. And as much as it scares me, as unyielding as the world around me had become, I cannot forsake it.   
But how? I’m not a saviour, I am not strong or brave or powerful. How can one destroy a monster without a means to do so? I don’t want this. I didn’t raise the dead, can’t take control of something I don’t understand. This is the assumption that brought on the apocalypse. I won’t make the same mistake twice.  
And there is the heart of it.  
I must do something, that much is clear. And yes, I must commit the same mistake that brought us here. But now I know. Now I know what the error was, where the misplaced sign is, and I can fix it. Yes. A mathematical error. A mathematical error I’m about to correct.  
Stepping into roles we did not understand twisted the world into a lifeless husk, so I will not. I will do what I must, because I can. Maybe I’m not quite what’s needed. Maybe I’m not big enough. But there have been enough delusions of grandeur here, and those are delusions of a sort that I do not entertain. And though the world may have stilled, though this may be the very last, useless point in existence, though I may fail to once again provide life and relevance, I will try. In the end, that’s all anyone can ask for. In the end, that’s all I can ask of myself.  
I will search for that which has been lost. It doesn’t matter if I find it. It matters that I care enough to look. No good deed goes unpunished, and if I can discern which knots go where, there will be punishment indeed.  
I know better than to believe in that which I cannot truly see. So I’ll have to make do.  
I’ll have to believe in me.

**Author's Note:**

> An introspective featuring Douglas Rattmann between GLaDOS's takeover and his actions against her. Written while on and while waiting for buses on my iPod.
> 
> There is a mural in Portal 2, in the room after the one with the Advanced Aerial Faith Plates, the one with the Hard Light Bridges, where you have to shoot a portal through a hole in the ceiling to get into the secret room. The mural is captioned with "There is no magic, only lost physics". I wrote this based on that. There will possibly be a companion piece to this from GLaDOS's point of view, and will be called "Only Lost Physics".


End file.
